Partners

RISE Forum

Launched in 2015, the RISE Forum (Resilient Innovation through Sustainable Engineering) is the nation’s first and only initiative to address issues of corporate sustainability and sustainable enterprise through the discipline of engineering, specifically a graduate program in Sustainable Engineering. As a vehicle for academic-industry collaboration, RISE enables graduate students to work directly with members on company-defined sustainable engineering projects and prepares graduates to address the full spectrum of sustainability issues confronting industry in the 21st century and beyond.

RISE Forum projects provide our graduate students an invaluable opportunity to tackle “real world” sustainability issues confronting industry and challenges them to use whole systems thinking to bring new and innovative solutions to life. Working alongside faculty and industry leaders, students employ the STEEP Model (Social, Technology, Environmental, Economic and Political) integrators to fully assess the life cycle impacts of a given project, process or product.

International Development

In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a global compass for achieving human and economic development that is both environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive. Engineering and technology will play a prominent role in the achievement of the SDGs, thus requiring a generation of engineers prepared also as development practitioners, equipped to confront the multi-dimensional complexities of development challenges. The Villanova Sustainable Engineering for International Development Initiative aims to meet this challenge.